Biting tongues on Myanmar

If Myanmar's military government cared about world opinion or wished to acknowledge the international outpouring of aid in the aftermath of a devastating cyclone May 3, pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi might be a free woman.
Unsurprisingly, the annual anniversary of her house arrest this week was marked with a renewal of that detention, which has been maintained off and on for 12 of the past 18 years.
It's also not surprising that the anniversary will not inspire its usual flurry of scathing official protests. Although the government in Myanmar inspires almost universal contempt, attention is focused on the 135,000 people dead or missing and the 2.4 million displaced.

Even U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who was in Myanmar over the weekend to push the junta to allow the entry of international aid workers, put the issue of Suu Kyi's detention on the back burner. "We must think about people now, not politics," Ban said. He's correct. Aid delivery trumps other concerns.
Still, people and politics can't ever truly be separated. Myanmar is a fine example of that. Politics is unfailingly at the forefront of the junta's concerns, at the expense of its people.
Just as it has deprived Suu Kyi of her rights because of the political threat she poses, it has prevented U.S., French and British warships laden with humanitarian supplies from participating in the relief effort. In both cases, the government's operative principle is its own survival.
Right now, the need to help the victims of Cyclone Nargis is paramount. Criticizing the junta won't further that aim. The difficult truth is that in the absence of any international willingness to challenge a government's sovereignty and intercede directly when a government fails to protect its people -- as it has in Myanmar -- the only option is engagement, patience and a certain tolerance for even the most reprehensible of regimes.